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Overview

From 10 to 12 February 2009, the World Health Organization’s Making Pregnancy Safer (MPS) Department, in collaboration with the Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development (CAH) and the Department of Reproductive Health and Research (RHR), held a three-day expert group meeting on the subject of adolescent pregnancy.

The overall aim for the meeting was to achieve consensus from international experts and WHO staff on the optimal ways to address issues arising from pregnancy in adolescence within the work of the key departments of WHO. More specifically, the meeting aimed to review the adequacy of the evidence and information presented in the document entitled “Position Paper on Mainstreaming Adolescent Pregnancy in the WHO’s Making Pregnancy Safer Strategic Approach” (World Health Organization, 2008), as well as to examine key actions that could advance WHO’s work in addressing adolescent pregnancy at all levels within the organization.

The expert group meeting made deliberate efforts to build on existing work in the area of adolescent pregnancy, including the technical working group meeting on “Meeting the Millennium Development Goals for Maternal Mortality Reduction and Pregnant Adolescents,” convened by WHO and held in Geneva August 5-6, 2003. It also drew on previous literature reviews on adolescent pregnancy including previous WHO-commissioned reviews (World Health Organization, 2004; World Health Organization, 2007), which was used as the basis of the Position Paper.

The outcomes of this meeting are equally to align closely with the work in progress of various WHO departments, including the planned Systematic Review of Interventions to Prevent Too Early Pregnancy and Poor Reproductive Outcomes among Adolescents in Developing Countries, led by the CAH Department.